I'm a stay at home mama living in PDX with the hubs Chris, our two boys and two cats. We are living in (and slowly fixing up) our first house, a midcentury ranch. Jesus has captured my heart, and I am so thankful!
This little blog is mostly about our adventures as a family of four, with the possibility of a recipe or craftiness sprinkled in there.

look at these too!

I wanted to share with you guys how I made my advent calendar in case you want to make one for yourself (yes I know it's too late for you to do one for the whole month...but you could do "the 12 days of christmas!")

I wanted our advent calendar to focus on activities, not things or candy.

I also didn't want to spend very much money to make it...I'd rather put that money towards the activities.

I only spent $1 on the envelopes and the rest was just paper I had laying aroud and I used my stamp set for the numbers.

This was so easy to make and I like that it's not horrible to look at like a lot of the ones in the stores.

The hardest part was coming up with all of the activities. I wanted to include things that our kids would look forward to doing each December. I looked around the blogosphere for ideas to put on the cards and I made some up myself. Since I had a hard time coming up with 24 ideas I thought I'd share mine with you guys, because chances are that you will too if you make one!

make a winter treat for the birds (cover a pinecone in pb and birdseed)

make a gingerbread house

turn up the christmas music and have a dance party

go to Zoolights

have a family christmas movie night

go to the library and check out christmas books

I put it on some baker's twine and hung it on our mantle. Truth be told we forget to check the envelope most days, but I still make it a point to do the activities. I'm sure next year B will be all over checking the envelopes.